I have a 3d event that I would like to draw the players attention to by sending it to the LFE when the player is too far away to hear the full range sound. As the player gets close I would like the LFE to return to it’s ‘normal’ volume.

Can anyone suggest a way to do this?

I expect there is probably a very straight forward way to do this, I just can not think of it at the moment.

I agree with all of your points apart from the bit about it being desirable. Yes, lots of people don’t have a sub, and lots of people have them set-up incorrectly, but catering for the lowest common denominator is never a reason not to do try something, especially in this instance.

Obviously the difficulty in locating the position of LFE sounds is another consideration, but again, as this is not a critical path sound, I don’t see that this matters n this instance.

We tried the 2d/3d pan morph example as our initial idea, but the LFE volume cannot be altered as the player approaches the sound. I.e. if the LFE is set to -10 then it remains at -10 as you get close.

It looks like I’m going to have another event/cue that is routed to the LFE that cross fades in and out over the required distance.

Don’t get me wrong, when working, the LFE rumbling for distant sounds would sound great and really add an extra dimension to the audio environment. I just thought I would mention possible drawbacks, though it sounds like you have already considered them.

The second event, is a good idea for a workaround at the moment. Perhaps a ‘feature request’ to make this more straight forward.

Perhaps a ‘feature request’ of able to use a combination of the surround pan effect (with envelope curves) and the 2D/3D pan would allow you to do what you need?

I’ve been putting some thought into this case and found a cool dynamic 2D positioning trick for 3D events! I had to hack around some around some of the validation in the GUI, so this is [b:3t5vzi4c]purely experimental[/b:3t5vzi4c]!!

Anyhow, you might like to test this out, and see how it works. I’m not sure the LFE is working as an discrete channel but technique works for other panning.

If people think it is worthwhile, I’ll put the tutorial up on the wiki and have the GUI issues dealt with 😉

This tutorial demonstrates how the 2D surround effect can be used on 3D effects via a 2D / 3D morph (3D pan level).
Our test case produces a LFE boost to sounds as they move away from the listener.